PART IV

Along Euoprean Lines

Chapter 17

Benelux and the German Factor

 

"One might better go without friends in Germany than take all this trouble about them."  (learning the language)

 

Mark Twain
A Tramp Abroad

 

 

Stone-faced soldiers with machine guns and leery-eyed German Shepherds at the ready, motorcycles and sidecars, barbed wire and gun emplacements – I did not know what I was truly expecting to see at the German border.  But I was simply waved through.  There was no passport check.  I rolled into Germany under thickening gray skies.  I remember a two-lane road, a small factory, modest brick homes – a semi-rural look.  There were few cars.   Still, this deserted look enhanced my apprehensions.

Hitler’s aspirations were nothing short of Aryan domination of the world.  But I wondered how any one race could possibly spread its forces so thin as to rule the whole world unopposed.  It seemed absurd.   But the carpet-chewing corporal had made a devastating attempt at it.  And who knew how many disciples secretly still followed his ideologies? 

I had thought about this before and come up with a bizarre idea: The idea of a takeover of any country by another might be discouraged by the training of special peacekeeping units of the UN which, when a takeover seemed imminent, could be covertly deployed to homes in various regions of the country to train locals in the art of resistance and sabotage.

But the Second World War had ended over forty years earlier.   So what had I to fear now from the country that had also given us Hansel and Gretel, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and the Christmas tree?

The rural road gave way to the highway that skirted Hamburg.   I did not see the city.  The sky exploded in a morass of dense, dark clouds and a torrential bombardment of rain.  Once again I was soaked, cold and shivering inside my banana and marshmallow rain suit.  My original plan was to make it to the Netherlands by late afternoon.  But I was crawling along under this biblical downpour.  It was a good day for building an ark (if you did it inside a warehouse) and for wishing you had taken out 41-day flood insurance.

The rain lessened near Bremen but the sky still looked threatening ahead.  Homes along the road became more frequent and their lots became smaller.  I was city-bound.  I looked for a farm on which to camp and so I turned up the nearest lane.

It was a brick drive that led to a number of small farms where there were cows, sheep and oxen.  I found a large redbrick home that was darkened by large trees in the side yard.  There was a barn and beside it walked a man with thick dark brown hair and a dense full beard.  For some stupid reason, I envisioned Hitler with his hair overgrown.  He wore work clothes and cap with flaps over his ears.  As I pulled in the drive by the back door, a young man in a car pulled in.   The bearded fellow came over but spoke no English.  The younger guy, blonde and trim, listened to my story, went into the house, came back and showed me a spot near the barn, close to the back door of the house where I could set up my tent.  A barking poodle/terrier kept me company while I set up.   The young guy invited me to come into the house for coffee.

Inside, it was warm in the way of my paternal grandparent's home – warm colors and dark wood, mellow odors, knickknacks and old furnishings.  The young guy took me upstairs to a newer part of the house that featured knotty pine.  At least three generations of this family shared the house.

This was the home of Johann and Ella Otten, 70 and 60 respectively, and their son, Reinhardt, the bearded man, and his daughter, Heila, and his son-in-law, the young guy.  His name was Klaus and took me to the modern kitchen of an upstairs apartment in the rear of the house where we shared coffee and conversation.  Ella came up.  Like Iris Carter back at the campground near Ropersole, Ella had the look and bearing of Dorothy Gage, my grade four teacher.

After about an hour's conversation, translated by Klaus, I returned to my tent and was soon joined by Klaus, Eila and her father.  They chatted away in incomprehensible German as I fumbled with my English/German phrase book to try and join in.  Eila went back in and got a Deutsche/English dictionary and my tutoring in the German language began.  (Phonetic spellings follow…)

"Hund," she said, pointing to the dog.  "Zelt," indicating my tent.

I awoke at 3:30 in the morning.  A breeze rustled through the trees.  It was mild and I felt safe and content.  It gave me pause to think of the journey, of girls, of language and of wishing that I knew what was being said.  And I thought of how nice it would be to have someone to share this with.

The next morning, Klaus and Eila had gone to work and I shared breakfast with Ella.  We ate at the dining room table in the front part of the house.  On the simple floral tablecloth there were white dishes and cups.  Soft modern music played low on an antique thumbnail radio that sat atop a wooden china cabinet in the corner.  The wallpaper was brown with a mat-like pattern.  There were photo prints on the wall, a floral calendar, and a simple clock that showed it was 9:20.  There was a rack for rolled magazines and above it a wood trough for pens.  Artificial flowers bloomed in an orange pitcher next to the radio while leafy stems dangled from a vase that suspended near an old floral light fixture over the table.

Ella wore a dark blue dress and a light brown sweater.  She motioned for me to sit down.  She busied herself by getting my breakfast by taking moments to look at my photos, postcards and world map.

"This is where I live," I said.

"Ya, ya, this is good, " she said.

"Vas is das?" I said, pointing to the dark bread.

"Brode, she said.  "Brode"

"Brode?"

"Rodden," she said.

"Rotten?"

"Rodden," she said, letting the "r" reverberate.

(She was telling me that this was roden brod - rye bread.)

"Sandwich," I said.  "That's what I eat of the trip all the time.  Sandwich."

"Ya, ya," she said with a laugh.  "No Sandwich."  She stirred a cup of coffee for me.  "No sandwich now," she said with another laugh.

"Windy.  Lots of rain," I said, looking out the window.

"Ya," she said and said some words in German.  "Ya, blew"

"Blew?

"Ya,"

"Vas is das?" I said.

"Metwurst."

I was looking at the food she had put before me: "shaken" (ham), “Fish et tomatten" (fish in tomato sauce)…

"Das es gute," I said.  "And das coffee is gute too."

When listening to the Otten family, the German language did not seem so harsh, only difficult to pronounce and to learn.  Mark Twain had written: "One might better go without friends in Germany than take all this trouble about them." (learning their language)  I wasn't going to be in Germany long enough to learn the language, but I had already learned that it was worth the effort to share friendship with Germans.

I told Ella of my travel plans for the day.  Ella showed me where I was on the map and where I would be going.   I understood her to say that Klaus had left at 5:00 a.m. his job at Mercedes Benz (he worked as a painter).  Eila, a secretary, was also gone.  Ella had worked as a secretary too.  I fumbled with the German-English dictionary to explain that I had once been an antique dealer and that Papa Smith, whose father had been born in Essen, had been a butcher for 50 years.  I learned that fewer children stayed on farms these days and that Ella's grandfather had lived in America for several years and then returned.

In the background, Stevie Wonder's “Part-time Lover” played on the radio and I lost even more sense of cultural distance and personal reserve.

Husband Johann lumbered into the dining area and sat down at the table.  He was a man enfeebled by age – heavy-jowled, gruff, his thinning hair tussled from sleep, a thick tired-looking man who walked heavily with an aluminum cane.  He did little more than nod at my presence.  Ella stood beside Johann and put her arm around him while I took their picture.   Then it was time for me to leave.  Son Reinhardt joined us and we said goodbye.  Ella gave me 10 Deutsche Marks.  I thanked my hosts and returned to the tent and Melawend to pack up.  When we rolled around the front of the house, Ella was standing on the front porch and she waved goodbye.

Melawend and I rolled on past more red brick homes.  Many had thatch roofs but I took no time to photograph them.   I stopped in Bremen long enough to photograph on a sidewalk a metal advertisment column that bore a movie poster of Steven Spielberg's E.T. – "Der Film, der die Welt rührte". 

After a short sunny ferry ride across the Wesser River between Blumenthal and Bern, the sky turned gray and it started to rain.  I ran out of brick farmhouses around Oldenburg.  When I crossed into The Netherlands (no hassles at the border), the land flattened out and became open.  Symetrical lean trees lined the roadside – grown as windbreaks, I imagined, but highly ineffective as the branches were all too high to cut the wind and rain that whipped across the road.  We soon rolled beside and over trim canals along flat grassy land that reminded me of the prairies in Manitoba, velvety and lush green even under these wet gray skies.  Arrows pointed from bulging red and white windsocks mounted on poles on overpasses.

From the Walt Disney movie Pinocchio, I remembered the little Dutch marionette girl who sang to the Pinocchio: "…you love me by the Zuiderzee".  Until Roman times, the Zuiderzee had been an inland lake.  The sea rose during the Middle Ages so that the wooden Dutch girl would have referred to a sea bay that had been created by tidal waves.  The Dutch wanted to reclaim flooded land.

Between 1927 and 1932, technology created a new inland lake now known as IJsselmeer.  In a high head wind and drizzle, Melawend and I rode the 19 miles across the Afsluitdijk (The Enclosing Dike).   To the left, I could see the IJsselmeer, but the grassy crown of the dyke obstructed the view of the Waddenzee and beyond, the North Sea.  I stopped about four miles (6.5 km) on at an observation area for a panoramic shot from a footbridge.   The headwind forced me to aim north for a scene showing the North Sea over the crown of the dike to the left.  To the right was the Ijsselmeer beside the bi-level four-lane highway.  The line of this strip of engineering tapered and disappeared into the gray horizon from which Melawend and I had come.  It was bleak surrealism; emerging straight from nothing, heading straight for nothing and nothing in between but water and this stretch of road.  It underscored the emptiness of being destination-minded, ignoring the journey.  It was air travel on the ground, a long empty runway between where you came from and where you were going, the thin gray pencil line between A and B that you drew on a map.

Since Hamburg, wind and rain had chilled me to the bone.  Home for the night was a hay wagon in a barn at the end of a cobble lane about 15 miles north of Amsterdam.  I arrived around 7:30 p.m.  I stayed at the farm of twenty-something Dick Bouwes and his father who lived the house next door.  Dick, who pronounced his name "Deek", spoke only Dutch, but we managed conversation using gestures and single words. 

He took me on a tour of the small farm.  He bred rabbits, including the angora, which weighted up to 13 lbs (6 kilos).  He showed me his horse, Bart, and the hay rake that Bart pulled.  There was an 800-litre stainless steel milk container that was half full, and the milking machine the he said would be running at 6:00 a.m. 

Dick wished me a good journey and went to set up in hay wagon in the driveshed.  At the end of the wagon was a conveyor belt that drew hay up into a dark loft near an interior thatch room.   There was a stained glass widow in the side of the shed.  This place was home for the night.  Before I drifted off to sleep, I ate some SunMaid raisins and wired myself to my walkman.

It continued to rain the next morning.  I was reliving the numbing damp days of Scotland.  I managed one more image of the Netherlands, a definite cliché: a red tractor plowing the earth beside a field of tall green corn with a quintessential Dutch windmill in the background.

As Melawend and I rode a flat straight highway that skirted Amsterdam, the sky was still overcast but had sunny breaks.  I could see the low skyline the capital of this land that had had so much colonial influence throughout the world.  I knew that it was the cultural center of The Netherlands and I had read that it had 40 museums and delightful sights like the canals that were brightly illuminated at night.  I debated whether of not to stop.  I was shivering.  I also knew that Amsterdam was famous for, among other things, its cheese and for its brothels.  The thought of nestling my head between warm breasts and alternately nibbling on nipples and some aged cheddar cheese was very appealing, but it was just a cold, hungry, lonely guy's fantasy.

To my lasting regret, I decided to bypass Amsterdam.  I watched its modest skyline slide by as Melawend me sped down the highway.  I even felt I had disappointed Peter Verberg, one of my best boyhood friends who I had not seen in years, whose family had come the land he called Holland.  But I was just too cold and tired.  For the first time, I began to feel ill.  Besides, there was a warm welcome waiting for me in Brussels – Marianne.  Onward Melawend and I raced toward the Belgian capital, skirting Antwerp and its 250 diamond-cutting and polishing shops.

 

Brussels was home to some pretty heavyweight organizations.  It was the home of the Economic Community (EC) which would become part of the Economic Union (EU) that included Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain.  Brussels was also the home to NATO whose purpose was “to enhance the stability, well-being, and freedom of its members by means of a system of collective security.”  I remembered sidestepping the security that had surrounded the NATO meeting back in Halifax.  Brussels was…

It was becoming apparent that each country, each region, each city bore so much history and culture and significance of which I was only vaguely aware or was even totally ignorant.  I began to feel that I was utterly unprepared for the task that I had set myself.  Some diplomat I am!   In my weakened state, feelings of guilt began to creep in.  I wanted to shrivel up and hide and somehow get a grip on what I was doing.  For now, Brussels would have to be Marianne and the chance to get warm again.

I stuck to main motorways.  Melawend barreled along at 80+ kph through mostly wind and rain into the sprawling metropolis of Brussels.  At a busy metro station, I called Marianne.  She sounded like Lorraine, a French-Canadian girl who was a childhood neighbor and friend.  She would be late, she said – she had to commute a total of four hours each day between her apartment in Brussels and the office in Turnout where she worked.

I found my way to the tall apartment building on the rue du Progres where Marianne lived with her cat.  I waited by the front door.  When we finally met, she even looked a bit like Lorraine but blonde.  She was attractive, like a model but not as tall and she was more rounded.  She had that warm, comfortable look that was at once sexy and motherly.  It took four trips to the eighth floor to bring up all my gear.  It was a small clean-lined apartment with a brown shag carpet, a simple pine dining table, and a set of glass shelves that held large models of vintage sports cars.  While I was trundling up with my gear, Marianne poured me a hot bubble bath.  I luxuriated for half an hour.  When I emerged, I was met with a handshake from Patrick Boes, Marianne's boyfriend.  Patrick had thick brown hair and a full beard and looked vaguely like Robin Williams. They shared the apartment with Marianne's cat, which had thick fine white fur and a timid disposition.

Sleeping arrangements would be awkward, Marianne explained.  She and Patrick were now living together.  She rose at five in the morning and would dress in the living room (where I have to sleep), so as not to wake Patrick who would rise at eight.  They had plans for me – I would stay at Patrick's newly vacated but still furnished apartment.

What incredible luck!

That evening, Marianne took me to a Pizza Hut and treated me to a Supreme with apple pie and ice cream for dessert.  She had a salad, a cup of coffee and bottled water – she was on a diet.   She was a bit heavier that in the photos she had sent me, but she was one of those girls who could put on weight and still be very attractive.

"At least it has gone to all the right places", she said.

We returned to her place and the three of us went over to Patrick's apartment in his 1979 Alfa Romeo – a fast, five-speed car.  The apartment was in the Roodebeek area.  It was a modern unit, with brown tones, chrome, and smoked glass.   There was an oak bookcase and a cowskin rug.    While Patrick showed me around, Marianne was in the bedroom, making up the brass bed.  In the bedroom there was a mirrored closet and sketches of Paris.  In the living room, there was a lifelike stuffed sheepdog lying on the floor by the sliding glass door.  Over a sectional couch, there was a framed line drawing of a copulating couple. The place was warm and clean and private and it would be my home for a time – quite an improvement over the hay wagon the night before.

After they left, I sat on the couch and listened to the stereo.   I relaxed to songs by "Old Blue Eyes" (Frank Sinatra) and wondered about reaching far-off New York, New York, my way.  And I began to question if I had bit off more than I could chew.

The next day, I went to the embassy and met George Cowley, a Public Affairs Counselor.   He was trim and resembled a young version of American senator Bob Dole (who, having lost the 1996 US presidential election against Bill Clinton was now famous for TV commercials in which he said, “I just can’t win!”)  George had a vibrant efficiency about him, officious but full of good humour, friendly and outgoing.   When we returned to the embassy, there was a reporter from Le Soir, the national newspaper of Belgium.  In a conference room, George and his colleague, Alex Destrebeq, the adjunct for the Department of Culture and Information, translated for the reporter.

(Le Soir was published in French. The other language of Brussels was Flemish – the historic name for Dutch.  Brussels was officially bilingual while the country was trilingual.  In 1963 a law was passed establishing three official languages within Belgium: Dutch in the north, French in the south, and German along the eastern border.  In 1971 a constitutional change was enacted giving political recognition to these three linguistic communities, providing cultural autonomy for them.  It sounded like a viable plan for Canada.)  

When we returned to the embassy, I was surprised to see they actually had a dossier on me.  I suddenly felt "official" and committed.  From my experience as a law clerk who specialized in real estate, a file represented a scheduled contract, something that had to be initiated, executed and closed.  When things went wrong, it had to be aborted.  Seeing the file was somewhat intimidating but it was also gratifying to know that I was being taken seriously.

George explained that seeing the Burgermeiseter of Brussels was no easy task – they had been waiting to see him since February!  They would make arrangements for me to see a tourism official in Brussels.

George made some phone calls and then took me on a tour of the Grande Place, the magnificent Gothic square in the middle of Old Town.  It had been bombarded by French troops in 1695 and only the tall slim tower of the Town Hall (completed in 1455), dominated by a statue of St. Michael, patron said of Brussels, had been left standing.  The rest of the square consisted of the rebuilt Maison du Roi (King's House) and the various guild houses with their ornate gilt and lavishly decorated Flemish baroque-style facades.  Though the buildings looked filthy from decades of modern pollution, the architecture and ambiance of the Grande Place remained utterly exquisite.  It too defied hyperbole.

I knew that Belgium had at least tried to remain neutral during World War I so it was hard to imagine – amid this beautiful square with artists making their own renditions and patrons sipping whatever at outdoor cafés – the observations made on August 21, 1914, by the American journalist and writer, Richard Harding Davis.  He observed the German war machine passing through Brussels in a line the rolled by unbroken for 26 hours.

"There were no halts, no open places, no stragglers...Like a river of steel it flowed, gray and ghostlike...with the mystery of fog and the pertinacity of a steam roller."

Beauty was often violated by war.

While asking directions to the office of Culture and Tourism, George noticed a little girl who was carrying some sketches she had drawn.  George got down on one knee and chatted with her in French.  She proudly showed him her work.

He had arranged for me to see the assistant Director of Culture and Tourism and arranged a little exchange.  Annette Onyn, a Tourist Information Officer, gave me material on Brussels which George offered to send back tourism material to Fort Erie.

On the way back to the embassy, George took me through covered shopping street where he bought a copy of The Bulletin.    This place was the Galleries Royales St. Hubert, one of the oldest glass-covered shipping arcades in Europe.  It was also the oldest connection between the heart of Lower Town and Upper town.  Along the narrow vaulted arcade there were shops with arched valences, flags of many countries, a café with white street-style lamps and tables covered by coral-colored tablecloths.  The light filtering in was warm and even tinged in sepia tones my growing romantic thoughts of Brussels.   I had already seen enough to know that it was an elegant city.  It also had an expensive atmosphere.  George explained that our ambassador's lifestyle was diminished because he was paid in Canadian dollars, which had gone down 40% against the Belgian Franc in the last year.

George had been here a year and a half and found it a stark contrast to the ancient city that had been his last station – Cairo.  He provided me with valuable information about Egypt’s capital, mostly just to adapt to its hectic ways.  I felt somewhat bemused to think that I was actually going to Egypt and beyond, sometime soon.

"You probably won't have much problem right through to Khartoum," he said.  "Local people don't have anything against foreigners, in fact you will probably have offers of help along the way.  But with the civil war going on in southern Sudan, you may have to circle around through Zaire, bypass Uganda and come back up through Tanzania into Kenya."

George, Alex and the staff at the embassy had made me feel significant, and that my journey was worth something to people other than myself.  They put themselves on the line to promote me and this inspired me.

George had some errands to run.  I went to the American Express office off Place Louise and got on bus #60 to go back to the embassy.  I ended up going the wrong way, taking whole 2-hour route the bus took through suburbs.  Half a block away, I could have caught the #60 that went back into the city.

I returned to Marianne's place and arrived at the same time as Patrick.  We talked of travel and of Patrick's model car collection.  He showed me a 20" long Bugatti which was worth over $500.  It had 3000 mostly metal parts, was hand-painted and had taken 200 hours to build.  It had gears in the axle and pistons in the engine.  It had moving parts such windows that rolled down.  I handled it gently.   

Patrick grew up in Ghent and he recommended that I see the antiquities of nearby Bruges, "the best-preserved medieval city in Belgium" (Baedeker's).   I loved the thought of taking a boat ride along its canals but I had already realized that there were just too many places that I would have to forego on this journey, including Bruges.   I felt that time and money would be my Waterloo (which, by the way, I also did not see, is near Brussels).

Late that evening, Marianne and I took Melawend to Gare du Nord, the huge railway station across from her apartment building.  This was Marianne's idea because she did not want to ask the bossy Italian landlady about putting the scooter in the garage.  She was concerned about leaving the scooter outside the building because Patrick had had two headlights stolen while his car was parked near the front door.

It was bizarre to wheel Melawend through electronic doors meant for pedestrians and right into the terminal.  I walked her into the baggage area through a vaulted room that had a marble floor and columns.  I was amazed to be charged the equivalent of only $1 per night.  I put Melawend up on a wooden storage platform with other scooters.  I relaxed knowing the area was always lit and guarded.  My gear would remain under plastic on Marianne's balcony.

I returned to “my” apartment.  I enjoyed traveling on Brussels’ metro system.  Everything from the gold cars with their orange seats to the terminal walls was finger-test clean.  There was no graffiti.  There was a cold sterility about it but it was efficient and safe.  And there was music playing on the p.a., better than average “elevator” music. (Having just written that, I can’t remember that I’ve ever heard music while in an elevator!)   It was instrumental music, familiar tunes that included "Stranger in Paradise", and Neil Diamond’s "September Morn”.

The next day, Saturday, was Marianne's day to do chores.  Sunday would be our day together.  So I lazed around Patrick's apartment and caught up with my journals.  I shopped at a local store for note pads. Most other shops were closed, so I window shopped.  Noted prices: 375 francs (about US$10) for a flex table lamp; 30,000 francs for a VCR (about US$800).  The phone was disconnected in the apartment.  It was great to have such a nice place to myself, but I felt isolated and also lonely, not having a girl to share it with.  Later, I went for a walk. Back at the apartment building, voices echoed in the hallway.  I saw eyeholes in closed doors and smelled good food that was being cooked behind them.

Back in the apartment, I poured myself a glass of Spanish sherry and sat on the couch.   I listened to a segment of Robin Leach's Lifestyles of The Rich & Famous that I had audio-recorded back in Ridgeway.  I remembered Loretta Swit (Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan in the TV series M.A.S.H.) standing on a gleaming yacht, extolling how the Italian port village of Portofino looked like a painting.  (We're going there).    I sipped the sherry and thought about my future – the desire to have my own home again, to learn how to cook, to make money.   I felt strange and guilty that I was not on the move.  I thought about what George had said about Africa.  Thinking about India and beyond....  I had so far to go and that impulse to move grew.

While updating my journals, I listened to a recording of a live performance by Frank Sinatra.  He said:

"Oh, here's something we can't leave out when we do a performance.  Cole Porter's shining hour...and Nelson Riddle's...one of his great works."  Then he sang: “I have got you under my skin...”

I listened again to his trademark song: “My Way”.   Frank Sinatra's way.  The way of The Chairman of the Board.  Sinatra had an intimidating quality that commanded, almost demanded, respect.  I could imagine some tough guy saying, "Do it or I'll rearrange your face."  That was the image I had of him.  His reputed connections to the Mafia and his tough-guy movie persona contributed to that overwhelming presence.  There was gritty, down-to-earth power in his voice that gave life to the unsung feelings of romance, frustrations or ambitions of the common man, such that you thought, Yeah, go for it, Frank!  Sing it like it is!  He gave voice to the man who when beaten down got himself back on his feet to fight again.  He had the go-for-broke, go-for-the lady drive that he infused in men and used to swoon the ladies.  Right now, he helped inspire a lonely guy who was on a distant road.

I arrived at Marianne and Patrick's at 9:15 the next morning.   Patrick still sleeping.  Marianne was made up and looked radiant.  We had almond coffee and looked at my photos.  We went to buy fruit on the other side of Gare Norde, in what I would later see was a red light district.  We took the train to center of the city.  At Grande Place, Marianne modeled a Hiker's Haven sweatshirt.  She felt a little embarrassed with her coat open, flaunting the bright-colored logo on the sweatshirt, standing by a street lamp and sitting in an outdoor café.  But she loosened up and enjoyed our little adventure.  She bought me a Coke in Le Roi D'Espagne a café on the square.   It was dark with old woodwork that made your eyes hurt to look out a window.  She took me to see the statue of Pissing Boy.

This little bronze guy – the Mannekin Pis – was the stuff of numerous legends dating from the 8th century.  The statue was of a chubby infant boy holding his penis and passing water.  One story said that he was a boy turned to stone by a hermit when the boy pissed on the doorstep of the hermit's cell.  Another was that in the 11^th century the infant successor to a Duke galvanized his faltering troops to victory after calmly pissing from his tree-slung cradle on the battlefield.  And there were others:

·         during the Crusades, the Count of Hove atoned for his son's constant pissing on the procession of the host of returning crusaders by having the statue put up;

·         with his piddle, a city youngster put out the fire lit by the enemy;

·         a townsman lost his son after taking him to popular festivities and found him five days later at the corner of Rue de l'Etuve in the famous pose;

·         the 15^th-century witch who condemned a boy to piss forever for relieving himself on her doorstep located at the corner of Rue du Chêne and Rue de L'Etuve and the good old man who saved him from this fate by carrying a statuette which he carried to the spot, put in the stead of the little boy and took the child by the hand and brought him home.

 

It had long been a custom to present costumes to honour the Manneken Pis, the oldest citizen of Brussels.  There were now over 400 costumes in all – from the formal evening attire presented by Louis XV in 1747 to an Elvis Presley concert suit, many of which were designed to accommodate the boy’s preoccupation.

Marianne bought me some Pralines – delicious white & brown Belgian chocolates.  We walked back to her apartment via the crowded rue Neuve, the main pedestrian shopping street in Brussels, arriving back around 3:30 in the afternoon.  I returned to Patrick's apartment and ate waffles.  I had bought 4 crests of the best quality country crests I had seen (but not too many because it would have looked like I bought them all in one place) and I sewed them onto the Odyssey Jacket.  While sewing, I watched a ho-hum horror video then drifted off dreamlessly in the brass bed.

The next morning, I went to Marianne's apartment to get the keys to Melawend, only to realize I had left them in my baggage on her balcony.  I remembered not to bother the landlady so I sought the help of a cleaning woman.  Despite her valiant efforts after removing the door handle plate, I still could not get in – there would be no Melawend in the photo for Le Soir.  The photographer chose a rooftop terrace among modern high-rise office buildings.  Click.

I walked around those office buildings, taking photos including a statue of two shapely nude women by the Maurice Delsen Building.  I stood on trashcans and benches for shots of the crowds along the rue Neuve.  I noted that 7-Oscar winner Out of Africa (Souvenirs d'Afrique) was playing at a theatre, and I was still amazed even to think that I would visit the African world of Baroness Karen Blixen.

Back at Marianne's apartment, I detoured to the red light district along Aerschot Stratt, on the far side of the Gare du Nord.  There were decrepit buildings and hookers sitting in windows, like oversized displays in tiny old shops.  Most of the women wore thick makeup and skimpy lingerie.  One gal was a busty old veteran with a pale, stark, painted face.  She smiled and cantilevered her globular, cellulite-rippled bum toward me.  She had a hard decayed look – a seasoned organ grinder with a body that looked like something organic that had been left out too long in the rain.  Yet there was a soft grandmotherly twinkle in her eyes: I’ll take good care of you.

There was also a lovely satin-skinned Negro girl in a red and leopard-pattern bikini.  She turned toward me and dipped down to show me her large breasts.  They glowed in the afternoon light like perfect nippled jugs of dark honey.  She looked into my eyes.  There was no ambiguity here.  As a lonely, unattached guy, I was tempted.  Her sultry gaze and her now writhing body promised waves of orgasmic paradise, but I feared something grim might also be contracted.  Aside from my own moral guidelines, I was deterred by the specter of AIDS.  The disease was just beginning to cast its apocalyptic shadow over the world of casual sex.  It was safer and cheaper just to look and fantasize.

I was the only person window shopping along the street so I felt more observed than the ladies in the windows.  But as I shied away from Aerschot, I considered for a time that there must be a legitimate reason why prostitution remained the world's oldest profession.  Maybe it had something to do with the world's oldest malady – loneliness.  So why was prostitution a crime in so many countries?

Marianne returned around 5:30 and we shopped for groceries.  I bought bread, jam and strawberry wine.  We talked of travel plans while Patrick watched a cops and villains show on TV.

"I don't know much French," I said, "but I try."

Marianne laughed.  Patrick joined in.

"When you are over, and you have brought your memories, you write a whole chapter for me." Patrick said, his eyes squinting as he smiled.

Marianne shook her head.  She looked over my route as Patrick went back to his TV program.

“Take the red one here,” she said, pointing to a road on the map.

Patrick made deluxe omelets and then I took some rather posed photographs of Marianne and Patrick eyeing each other romantically over candlelight and wine.   It was time for me to leave.  We said our good-byes in the evening as I would be on my way the next morning while they were at work.  Marianne went with me down to the lobby.  We hugged and promised to keep in touch.  She was hopeful that they would have a house where I could stay with them on the next visit.   Then there was that sudden sense of separation and aloneness, more keenly felt as I went away in the night.

(Early 1999:  Marianne's brother recently alerted her when he discovered my Odyssey website while searching for Marianne's name on the Internet.  It was fantastic to hear from Marianne again when I received an e-mail from her shortly thereafter.  She and Patrick had gone on to have three children together but had recently separated.  They still live near each other in Brussels and get along well.  It is such a joy to have contact once again with someone special from the Odyssey.)

The subway terminal was virtually deserted.  As I waited for the train, I listened to the lonely, echoing strains of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow".  Back at Patrick's apartment, I finished the night with more of the Spanish sherry, akin to what Neil Diamond referred to in his song “Cracklin’ Rosie” as a "store-bought woman," and I remembered spending several Christmas Eve's alone with her.

The next morning, I returned to Marianne's apartment, did the dishes and organized my gear.  I went to the Gare du Nord around noon and got Melawend and began loading her up outside the front entrance to Marianne's building.  A bald Negro man with fringe of salt and pepper hair, a tall thin white guy with straggly black hair and a cute Negro girl were loading a couch into a van.  The bald man looked at Melawend and the mountain of gear, and at me.  He smiled and shook his head.  When I could not reply to his question in French, he went to his van, returned and gave me 100 Francs.

Melawend and I rode to the embassy.  The staff had tried to find the original of Girve's open letter of greeting until I realized that I had left it in Copenhagen.  George said he would translate my letters into French and pass them on to the Burgermeister's office.  They contacted Bonn to let them know I was on my way.  He gave me 40 Canada pens, steno pads, CDN pins.  I had been truly impressed with George and wished our embassies were full of George Cowleys.   I took photos of him on Melawend, thanked him and was on my way out of Brussels by 4:00 p.m.

It was sunny but because I started so late, I had to look for a campsite.  I stopped along the road at Mange, in the forested hills just beyond Nemur.  I heard a cow.   Nearby, I found a nice brick house with sculptured cedar in the front yard.  A heavy old woman answered the door.  Her grandson and daughter came to door too.   I showed article from Le Soir.   There were smiles of understanding and a plump finger pointed to a spot with some trees off the driveway where I was welcome to camp, about forty feet from the front door, near their flower garden.

(In 1914, National Geographic magazine featured its first color picture – a Lumiere Autochrome of a Belgian flower garden.)

That evening, I checked Melawend's blood – she was still running on same quart of oil I put in her at Gatwick.  The rear tire was showing serious wear.  I repaired saddlebag straps.

The next morning, we rode under mostly overcast cool skies through Bastonge, a small town by the River Wiltz on a high wooded plateau, which was part of the Ardennes.  Bastonge had been badly damaged in the "Battle of the Bulge" in 1944 and there was a huge star-shaped memorial on Mardasson Hill to the 77,000 US soldiers who lost their lives in the Battle.

We rode into the southern half of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.  We were on the Uplands of Lorraine, called Gutland here in Luxembourg, part of the vast Paris Basin that had the French capital at its center.

We rode on through Ettlebruck, which was nestled at the confluence of the Wark and the Alzette with the Sûre at the edge the wooded massif of the Ardennes. These were pretty wooded hills, the "The Switzerland of Luxembourg”.   Ettlebruck too was almost destroyed during "The Battle of the Bulge" when Patton successfully attacked the Germans.   There was a statue to Patton here.

It was a blissful drive along the valley of the Sûre river, through Vianden – a pretty cobble-stoned village bisected by the Our River with a the 12^th century castle of the counts of Vianden high on a hilltop – a must see, later, I thought, but it became just distant dot in the photo.  Vianden was relatively busy with tourists walking the hilly streets.   Victor Hugo lived in the center of the village in 1871.   His house was now a museum but I did not linger to see it.

The beautiful river drive took us north from Vianden along the valley of the Our River to the intersection east of Clervaux.  We were once again at the German border and passed over with no checkpoint.

It rained and was cold through to Bad Münstereifel, an old town surrounded by a massive 13^th century wall that was 1 mile (1.5 km) long, with four gates and 18 watchtowers – one of best preserved medieval fortifications in Germany.

We were now about 40 km from Bonn and it had turned sunny in the late afternoon.  I needed to find a place to camp.  There were big farms but few farmhouses.  I finally picked one about 6 miles (10 km) west of Bonn.  The house was close to the road and there was a high wall between the house and the garage.   I pulled up and a middle-aged woman leaned out second-story window.  I explained via my phrase book.  She pointed up the road from where I had come.  She spoke but I could not understand her.  Her tone betrayed frustration and she flailed her arms.  Her husband came to same window and then came down to meet me.  He walked me toward an orchard area down a lane that was adjacent to the house.   Still with no English spoken, he too pointed.   The land looked soggy and muddy.

Just then providence saved me when his daughter & her fiancé dropped pulled up in a car.  She spoke some English.  Yes, I could camp here, by the trees.  Everyone was very friendly.  They then showed me a garden house, a small addition to the house that led to a small, densely landscaped rear yard where there was hardly room for a tent.  Finally they led me to the garage.  It was attached to the house and was made of high concrete walls.  It was closed off from the main road by a huge steel door.  There was an open paved courtyard yard surrounded by covered parking areas and sectioned off into workrooms and areas for farm machinery.  I wheeled Melawend in.

Soon the whole family was present.  We introduced ourselves and had a wondrous time just pronouncing our names.

"And your name in English is…?" I said slowly.

"Henry," the fiancé said with no trace of an accent.  I felt silly.  Henry looked like John Travolta.

The parents were Mary and Matthias (Matthew) Dick, Gabrielle (Gabi) was their eldest daughter and Henry Nolden was her fiancé (they were to be married in three weeks).  The 19-year-old blonde-haired blue-eyed girl was daughter Marietta.  "Maria, please," she said.  Michael was her boyfriend and there was much nuzzling affection between them.

As they showed me where to set up in the garage, they were all laughing and chattering and I had no idea what they were saying.  I presumed it was about this rather strange character on the over-laden motorscooter that had dropped by out of nowhere and that they were having a high time accommodating him in their garage.

I laughed too and their hysteria grew even more.

Mary got me a cot.  Matthew showed me a light switch.

"We show you where is warm water." Gabi said.

I now had another room with a sink and a hot water shower – paradise for a vagabond.

Gabi invited me upstairs for tea that turned into a full meal of bread, meats and so on.  The parents came in, then the rest of the family.  Gabi made hilarious conversation with phrase books, gestures and translation.  This went on for almost four hours.  For some reason, the German language no longer hit the ears like a hammer – more like a Nerf ball.

"Danka for the food and everything," I said.  My efforts amused them.  The universal language was laughter.

I rose at 6:00 the next morning and met each one of the family as they left for the day: Gabi, a lab technician, left at 6:45 with Henry; Matthew left at 7:00 for farm acreage they rented, followed by Marietta at 7:15 who was off to her secretarial course.  Mary later made breakfast for me of breads and cheeses and she made me a lunch for the road.  I bade a thankful farewell to her. 

(We did not know that I would be coming back.)

On my way into the capital, I stopped at a gas station.

“I am going to move to Berlin as soon as it is possible,” the attendant said. 

His name was Karl.  He was working at the station part-time while studying economics at the University of Bonn.  He was as hard-bodied, blond-haired, blue-eyed an Aryan as I had seen in any war movie.  There was a fierce intensity in his eyes, but it was personal determination rather than nationalistic or racial fanaticism.  Karl might also have been a prophet. 

“Germany will someday be one again," he said.  "You will see this.”

Bonn was flat and sprawling and busy with traffic.  That is about all I noticed of it.  Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn in 1770 and lived unhappily here until he was 22 when he was drawn away to Vienna (There, he dazzled the aristocracy with his piano improvisations.  As I write this, I am listening to Beethoven’s exquisite Sonata 21 in C Major, Opus 53).  In 1949, Bonn had been chosen as the seat of the new Federal Republic of Germany.  Now, in 1986, in the evenings, government officials and the personnel would rush along the highways on their way to their homes in Bonn's vast suburbs (You could romanticize that image by playing Beethoven's Symphony No. 9.)

There were 120 embassies in Bonn and I was on my way to the one owned by Canada.  There I met Jennifer Broadridge, an attractive, fine featured, efficient girl.  She paved the way ahead by calling the German-Canadian Friendship Association in Lahr.  She made another call and managed to reach Thomas Böechler, the chief of the city Press and Commercial Office.  I rode over to the Radhus (city hall) and met Thomas who was a friendly young guy.  He welcomed the exchange with Fort Erie on behalf of the absent Burgermeister.

He called the Bonner Rundshal, a Bonn newspaper.  I soon met Hoffman, a cub reporter, and gave him my story.  He more or less just gaped at me when asking his questions when he should have been taking notes.   A photo was taken.

With my diplomatic self-assignment in Bonn completed, I was off to Essen, to the valley of the Rhur River from where my great grandfather, Johann Schmidt, had fled to Canada before the outbreak of World War I.  (To North-Americanize his name, he had it changed to Smith.)  I took the Autobahn and it was sunny all the way to Essen.  I was surprised to see a big, modern city.

Again, I had not done my homework and again made an excuse, telling myself that I would come back.  For now, I simply wanted something to show my father, perhaps photos of the city and the area from whence our Smith family roots had been transplanted.  I stopped at the Folkwang Museum.   Outside, I spotted an older gentleman who had thick grey hair and wore a brown suede jacket and cap.  I asked if he would pose with Melawend and me beside the museum sign – I wanted to prove that we had reached Essen.  I shook hands with the smiling gentleman and held a hand-written sign on the back of a notepad that read; "Thank you Dad!"  The timer tripped my Minolta’s shutter.  With no English spoken, the man’s wife reached into her purse and gave me 2 DM (Deutsche Marks).  A 60ish woman was watching all this.  She spoke a little English and I explained what I was doing.  She reached into her purse and gave me another DM.

On the way back, I would have to settle for a photo of patchwork farms, homes and a small RV trailer park along the meandering Rhur, shot though a chain link fence on an autobahn overpass.  Just as I had done in Ironbridge, I told myself I would return to the Rhur, someday, to truly research my father's family roots so that I might pass on the family heritage to my children.  

(It is now more than 13 years later and someday has not come yet.)

To head south along the Rhine, I had to backtrack.  It was late afternoon, time to find a campsite.  Would the Dick family welcome me back?  I was lucky.  They were all there – the parents, the girls, the boyfriends, all surprised but happy to see me again.   Jolly conversation followed through the evening.  Michael went out and got sundaes from a summer season vendor who was from Italy (this was his last day to be open for business).  It was great fun, thanks largely to Gabi who translated for us.

We talked about the upcoming wedding.  About a week before the big day, there was to be a party with 150 guests.  They would bring presents and pieces of porcelain.  The guests smash the porcelain on the floor and throw confetti.  The couple would clean it up.  It was all for good luck.  We talked and laughed, ate breads and cheeses and drank delicious cherry wine made with sourer Keshen and Schnapps.

"It is too bad we do not fully understand each other," Matthias said through Gabi.

When I woke the next morning, most of the family had already left.  I packed to go, knocked at the rear door but there was no answer.  I rang the bell.  Mary came to the upstairs window and motioned me to come up for breakfast.  "Mange," she said pinching her fingers together and pointing to her mouth.

It was just the two of us.  Understanding was reached by pointing and saying single words.  Mary made me a lunch of sandwiches and three apples.  She filled my canteen with coffee.  She kept feeding me as we talked.  I had what I understood as “himbeer” – jam, with whipped cream on bread.  I downed lots of tea, Camembert cheese, three kinds of meat and toast.

At the door when I left, she clasped my right hand with both of hers.  "Auf Wiedershen!"

Germans, I was discovering, were not much different from North Americans.  They liked their leisure.  They liked soccer, handball and tennis.  They had taken up the American craze for jogging and fitness.  Television had long been their number one spare-time activity, although good old gabbing seemed to be up there too.  Many men loved their cars; it was their hobby.  Germany had given us Hitler, but few European countries had produced so many world-renowned poets, thinkers, engineers, scientists and musicians.

They were also romantics.  And now Melawend and I were riding south along No. 9 along the "Old Father" Rhine, considered the epitome of romantic Germany.  Today it was sunny and mild – probably the best day yet for riding since the early days in England.  You could fall in love on such a day, in such a place, and with such a place.

We reached Boppard, with its 1.5-mile- (2.5-km) long Rhine promenade.  Boppard was the center of the largest wine-growing region on the Middle Rhine.  (On the Bopparder Hamm alone there were some 1.5 million vines.)

I had to pinch myself, figuratively, to realize that I was really here, riding Melawend along the Rhine.  I recalled being back at the St. John River in New Brunswick, "the Rhine of North America" – well, I was heading south, passing through beautiful Werlau, seeing the steepening green banks of the river, flower-festooned old villages and castles on the shoulders of the high shores of the blue river.  To me, the scenes along the two rivers were complimentary - neither the same nor in stark contrast.  The St. John River was bucolic charm; this section of the Rhine was the essence of legends.

It was a haunted river, at least in the stories of robber barons and of knights who returned to catch their wives sleeping with someone else or to have lost to them otherwise.  The Romantic Revival had dawned towards the end of the 18^th century.   Scholars recorded the tales, poets added to the collection, painters portrayed them on canvas.  In other words, word about the Rhine got out.  Tourists began to arrive in growing hordes.  They hiked the high cliffs, promenaded the shores and took tour ferries on the river.  But for all of that, there was a pristine beauty here upon which man had been apparently careful to tread.

But the Rhine also confused me.  When I had thought of Germany, I thought of industrial morass.  The 820-mile-long (1,320 km) Rhine, flowing from the Swiss Alps to the North Sea, was the busiest waterway in Europe with 9,000 cargo vessels chugging along its shores.  Here the Rhine was cherished, laced with pretty villages along the seductive cleavage she cut through the land.  I had thought of Germans as having colorless imaginations and a stoic and even racist mentalities.   The loveliness and underdevelopment of the Rhine, at least in this region, betrayed a sentimentality in these people that was warming to the spirit.  Like everyone else, these people, the Germans, also had a loving, lighter side.

Beauty has its clichés – here it was adornments on the Rhine: the three fortresses at St. Goarshausen.  There was Burg Katz – built in 1393 - (the one with slender twin towers with conical roofs and arched windows in between).  It dominated the craggy hill that looms above St. Goarshhausen.  The Archbishop of Trier built Burg Maus a bit downstream as a rival castle, 400 feet above the Wellmich village.  He called it Thurnberg or Deuernburg – but the Count of Katzenelnbogen called it Castle Maus (Mouse, as a sign of how he regarded his neighbor – but this reminded me of my time with Marie, so I could see the humour attached to the Cat and Mouse castles.)  The latter was a ruin, solid square, except for a smokestack of a tower.  Both were on the left bank.  

Burg Rheinfel was above St.Goar.

I was riding on the east bank, which I believed was the best from which to observe the grandeur of the river.

Then we came upon a legend wrapped around a treacherous turn in the river where its narrows to 150 yards, around a shrub-covered rock 435 feet (132 meters) high – the Loreley. (ley­ is a cliff of rock: Lore is the name of the girl who was supposed to have sat on it.)  Legend had it that she was a beautiful mermaid who sat atop the rock, combing her blond hair and singing her siren songs.  Many a boatman had been captivated by her beauty and became oblivious to the dangers of the rapids below her, until it was too late.  Created in 1801 by the imagination of the Romanticist poet Clemens Brentano, immortalized by Henrich Heine's poem, and put to music by Frederich Silcher, she is part of the romance of Germany.  I thought she could also represent the dangers of seduction that was based on sudden infatuation.

If a man's safety and sanity could be screwed by the seductions of Loreley, they had better give respect to The Seven Virgins.  These were seven submerged reefs called Die Sieben Jungfrauen.  They were near Oberwessel (a place that a pretty girl in Texas had suggested that I visit).   The seven maids were said to have been turned into stone on account of their prudishness – a legend often told to unwilling girls by impatient lovers.  I did not see them but they were just beneath the surface of the Rhine.

The girl from Texas had been a penfriend.  From her letters, I sensed that she was full of life – a spunky, funny girl.  From her pictures she was a youthful, attractive blond-haired girl with excited bright eyes and full lips that formed an impish but alluring smile.  I liked her letters because they were so full of mostly positive energy.  She was a real go-getter.  I decided to call her and talk with her about the trip.  It was also our first conversation.

She wanted to come, at least she thought she did.  I thought it might be a good idea if we got together to see if we were compatible since we would be travelling together for a long time.

"I'm great in bed!" she said.

I believe we were both at bit startled to think I was suggesting that we sleep together first – when I was thinking of compatibility as travelling companions.  Though I must admit I had considered that it was a definite possibility.  I was also thinking greater possibilities, but I kept those to myself.  I thought: We'll see.

But when it became apparent that she would have to come to Canada first, and that the journey was going to be made as economically as possible – including camping – she began to shy away.  But we continued to talk and she said that I should really visit Oberwessel, where she had bought fine crystal and met nice people.

What I remember of Oberwessel is a small town on the steep slopes on the west side of the Rhine.  It was a town of towers - 15 watch towers and the town walls had been preserved from the medieval fortifications.  There were also a lot of church towers, including the 243-foot (72m) high steeple of Liebfrauenkirche.  Above Oberwessel was the Schönburg Castle, built in 12th Century and used since the Second World War as an international youth hostel.  Oberwessel itself was a small, quiet place of charming stone and half-timber buildings, flower boxes and cobbled narrow streets through which a Volkswagen "bug" could barely pass.  It was clean and pretty and seemed so remote and peaceful.  I saw only one picture-snapping tourist as Melawend and I motored slowly along its nearly deserted streets.

Near the edge of town, there was an imposing medieval tower near the railway tracks.  I stepped up to a retaining wall beside the tracks to photograph an old stone wall on the other side. The wall had a stone arch with a black metal gate in it.  It was below the Schönburg and might have been part of its periphery walls.  I held up my Minolta and composed the image.  I only became aware of a train when it suddenly whizzed by – within inches of my lens!  If had leaned forward a little bit… at least it seemed that way.  I had not realized I could block out so much through my concentration on photography – or was it simply absent-mindedness?

The experience shook me and I retreated to a bench on a shady street nearby.  I had also been a bit preoccupied with thoughts of my friend in Texas, almost believing, for some absurd reason, that I would see her here in Oberwessel and feeling that I should be sharing it with her.   Maybe that was the power of association.   I sat there and observed a blond-haired girl who was waiting for a bus – until I realized that I had been daydreaming, and she saw that I was looking at her.  I got on Melawend and scooted up the Rhine.

It was a straight pretty run through to Kaub.  In the river, on the northern tip of a tiny island Pfalz Grafenstein, was Pfatz Castle.  It had been built in the 14^th century by Ludwig of Bavaria (after whose fanciful castle Harry Oakes had supposedly and Walt Disney had actually modeled theirs.)  As a Customs house, a chain would be strung across the river to prevent the passage of any vessel until its captain paid a sum to the customs official.

Just ahead of me near Worms, I spotted a rest area and decided to get off Melawend and stretch my limbs.  A rider on a five-year old 750cc Honda motorcycle passed me.  The rider had a tuft of blond hair whipping up behind the helmet and a nice figure under brown leather coveralls.  The rider pulled into a parking area.  I followed and it was there that I met beautiful blonde-haired Ingrid.  She looked much like a girl I had had a crush on in my elementary school years.

"That's a nice bike you have there," I said.

"Thank you.  And that is a very loaded scooter you have," she said.  "Where are you from?"

I told her.  We found that we shared the joy of riding and we though it would be nice to ride together for a ways.  I told her I was on my way to Baden Baden.

"Ah, that it is too bad," she said.  "I must turn east just ahead."

It was late afternoon when I rode through the big, touristy town of Baden Baden, famous in part for its spas.  (The word “baden” means spa.   Roman baths had been discovered here.)  On the far side of town, I found myself heading up into high hills that were cloaked by the dark, dense Black Forest.  I backtracked to a hilly farm that was bordered by the forest.  An old woman was sitting on a steel barricade at the end of a long lane at the top of the hill next to the highway.  She spoke no English but she understood that I wanted to camp.

"Nein camping platz," she said. "Nein."

I showed my articles.

"Oliver!" she shouted.  "Oliver!"

A tall dark young guy came running up the hill.  His name was Oliver Langenbacher.  He spoke some English and went down the hill to one of the houses in a valley at the end of the lane to relay my question to the farmer who owned this hill.  A rough looking, fair-haired middle-aged man came back with Oliver.  He spoke no English but through Oliver I learned that I could camp by an apple tree beside the forest, near the main road.  I thanked him and Oliver and the old woman.  They smiled and left me to set up camp.  Melawend tipped over on the damp ground and the platform broke once again.  Being near the road and within sight of the farms in the shallow valley, I felt that many eyes were watching me.

The next day was the 6^th of September and it was sunny and mild, simply fantastic weather.  I stopped at a high point in the Black Forest on No. 500 between Baden Baden and Fueudenstadt (a town that had been flattened by Allied bombs in 1945).  This was the famed Black Forest I had heard about.  Black Forest Cake.  Cookoo clocks.  It was not black but rich and seemingly endless hills of dark green.  Even to someone use to seeing endless forests back home, the Black Forest was impressive in its beauty.

But it seemed an aberration of the truth.  Germany's forests, like many others, were dying.  Forests covered 35 percent of Germany and 50 to 70 percent of them were diseased, terminally damaged or outright dead woodland.  This increasing catastrophe was known locally as Waldsterben – the dying forest syndrome.

The killing was attributed to acid rain and other pollution caused by factories, power plants, domestic chimneys and automobile exhausts.  I learned from an article published in September 1985 that efforts had been made in the previous decade:

·         expenditures on energy were reduced by 30%;

·         recycling was done even in small villages;

·         new sewage works were helping to stop pollution of rivers (all rivers in Germany were found to be heavily polluted 20 years earlier);

·         attempts were being made to save natural areas from large construction projects including factories, new autobahns or nuclear power plants;

·         there had been successful anti-nuke resistance by West German rainbow coalitions;

·         there were specific actions that included pensioners planting young conifers; and

·         otherwise conservative peasants, housewives and working people had been giving militant resistance to nuclear power plants... 

Waldsterben seemed irreversible, but it was not in evidence here.   Amid lodge pole pines and birch, I stopped at a hotel and tourist shop complex and found a shop filled with the Germany’s exquisite and often humorous cuckoo clocks.  At the top of the hour, the shop was filled with a cacophony of cuckoo, cuckoo and whirings and gongs and chimes as carvings of people and birds and creatures of the forest emerged from inside the clocks to perform their amazing mechanical acts.  It was an awesome chaotic feast for the eyes and ears.  But silly me, I thought I had had my recorder on to record them – I discovered later the pause button had been on.

While I was tending Melawend in the parking lot, a few people went by and ogled my heavy-laden scooter, "Ou la la!"  A gray-haired couple and two same-age women came by. They were Heinz and Erika Jegener, Ilse Jeidel and Elfride Köehler.  I explained my world tour and showed them a map. The two women understood English and Ilse reached into her purse and tried to give me 20 DM.  I politely declined.  I showed them my postcards.

"Now we pay you," Ilse said.

Elfride also gave me 20 DM.  I gave them each one of my postcards.  They seemed very pleased to have them, as if they were collectable and might be worth something someday.

The Jegerners would soon be going to Oshawa in one year to visit a nephew and suggested they might stop by for coffee.  They asked for my phone number.

 

That afternoon, I arrived in Lahr.  As Jennifer in Bonn had recommended, I called Rainer Hildebrandt, president of the German-Canadian Friendship Association.  I had two hours to use before meeting him at the Association's meeting house.   Near the phone booth, there was a country and western bar called the Country Music Haus.  A girl stuck her head outside a window beside the parking lot.

"I hope you have a nice trip!" she said.

A few minutes later we were talking with each other at a table in the bar.  It was dim inside in the way of bars in the daytime.  It was woody and heavily North-Americanized with flags and Country & Western motifs.  The girl's name was Margaret.  She had brown shoulder-length hair and wore tight jeans and a black v-neck sweater.  She had a lovely full-figured body.  A guy who she referred to as "my brother, Denny," came by and joined us.  He was a paratrooper with the Canadian Forces stationed in Lahr.  In the bar, there were a few other military guys dressed in civies. One wore bathing trunks.  There were a few other girls.  Bright-eyed Johann Klaus Tobien, dressed in blue jeans western leather boots and a cowboy hat, was the owner of the bar.  He also joined us for a moment.  I had already ordered an orange juice.

"Never mind," Klaus said as I tried to pay.

Denny, who was French Canadian, bought me two expensive beers.   A couple of his buddies came by and we had a contest to see who could lift a bar stool straight up from the floor with one hand, arm extended, by grabbing the stool at the base of a leg.  I was pleased to have met the challenge.

Margaret smiled.  She was feeling no pain.

I left with an open invitation to return later and attend a party.  As Melawend and I rode to the train station about a quarter of a mile away, a heavy-set couple followed us on a ornate detailed Harley Davidson.  They pulled up behind us at the station.

"That's one hell of a load you have there," the man on the Harley said.  He and his wife were with the Canadian Forces.

I told him of my journey while looking at his awesome bike that gleamed with power.  They gave me some Canadian Flag stickers and patches.

Rainer pulled up in his compact car.  He was thirty-five, trim, had thick brown hair and wore a grey suit.  He asked me to follow him.  We rode through residential streets to the Association's clubhouse.  In the large meeting room, Rainer dug into a storage closet and loaded me up with anything he could dig out – 30 creamers, 4 cans of pop, plastic bags and a 20" x 30" nylon Canadian Flag. 

(I would carry that flag the rest of the way around the world and fly it next to the American Flag when I crossed over the Peace Bridge back to Fort Erie, almost two years later.)

It was said that Germans liked their verein – their club or society.  And there was a saying: “One German makes a philosopher, three Germans make a club.”   Germany had numerous verein – floral, fowl-breeders, fowl-watcher, stamp collectors, chess players… so did Canada, so did the United States, so did England… so what was so different about Germany?  

I had also read that it was a custom for each lord mayor or town council to give so-called “cultural offerings”, perhaps a gift of wine, to please and attract their guests.  I would soon discover this to be true of Lahr.

Rainer called his wife and led me to his home, a modest but nicely decorated place where I met his lovely wife Doreen and his little blonde-haired daughter Michelle.  With her glasses on, Michelle was the very image of my youngest daughter.  It was difficult to look upon Michelle without a longing to hug Wendy.  Dinner was served on individual wood platters where we cut meat and cheese and tomatoes and put it all on bread.  

(Just recently, I learned that Rainer and his family moved to a city suburb of Vancouver.  When they came by for a visit, I could not believe how little Michelle, like my Wendy, had grown up into such a beautiful young girl.  How time slips by!   But how wonderful it was to meet the Hildebrandt’s again and know that they live relatively nearby.)

Uwe Reider, a member of the Association, came over to Rainer's place.  He was young and bearded and wore glasses.  He looked amazingly like the high school chum who got me into weight lifting.  It was arranged that I would stay with him at his new apartment.  A pretty blond-haired girl with hazel eyes joined us.  Her name was Doris.  The group talked a lot in German, and a lot in English.  We talked and ate apples, cookies and chocolates, drank coffee and listened to the songs German songs, to the fluted tunes by Zamphir and to the theme to the movie Exodus (which seemed like a sad parody here in Germany, or perhaps it was reconciliatory thing).

I followed Uwe over to his apartment building, which was a large converted house.  We left the gear still tied to the platform and carried it, puffingly, up to his third-floor attic digs.   Uwe was twenty-one and was an electronics technician with BASF.  He was trying to emigrate to Canada and he asked my advice.  As I understood it, he first had to secure an offer of employment in Canada on his own.  He said liked to travel when he could.  I marveled at his postcards of bare-breasted girls in a tourist town called Lloret de Mar that was on the Mediterranean coast of Spain.

"It is a beautiful place.  Girls from all over northern Europe love to go there." Uwe said, smiling.   "So many enjoy it to take off their bras."

Uwe was soft spoken but his modest lusting over naked women was encouraging in a country whose people I had regarded as being rather stoical, mechanical and sexless.  But what had I known of Germans?

Most of what I knew centered around World War II.  I knew place names, not necessarily in Germany, that were associated with the Third Reich – Berlin, Auschwitz, Dachau, Birkenau, and Belsen.   I had seen war movies and documentaries.   I had read that Hitler kept diaries (so did I).  I read that he was obsessed with “the spear of destiny”.  In his 17^th century painting, Rubens depicted the Roman centurion Gaius Cassius Longinus piercing Christ’s side with a spear.  Legend arose that the spear acquired great power.  Hitler believed that possession of it would make him master of the world.  He was certain that a spear housed in Vienna was the spear of Longinus.  Mostly I saw images of hate, fanatical nationalism, precision military marching and the swastika.

I remembered that as a boy I had found a black-handled knife in my father’s garage.  It bore a white inset with a raised red swastika.   I had no idea of the significance of this knife, only that it was heavy and looked impressive.  I would hurl it at the studs in the garage walls until I missed.  One time, it hit the concrete floor and the tip broke.  I was too ashamed to tell my father about it.  I would later realize that Hilter had taken an ancient good luck symbol – the swastika – and turned it into something that would be reviled throughout the free world (more on this when we reach India), and I would always wonder if that knife had ever drawn blood.  But I had not seen one swastika since I entered Germany.  I thought, Maybe that's was a good sign.

The next day, Uwe drove me around in his blue sedan.  I rode white-knuckled in the passenger's seat, perhaps more from the unfamiliarity of being a passenger than from his excessive speed.  We drove through villages of small homes with red-tile roofs.   They were of beam and stucco construction in pastel browns or corals.  I was amazed that after we crossed the Rhine on a ferry, the French gendarmes just waved us into France.   We drove through more villages of one-story homes.  We passed by vineyards and by farms with fields of tall corn in Alsace / Lorraine area, skirted the suburbs of Strasbourg and crossed back into Germany, unchecked at the solitary Customs hut.  We stopped over a canal along the Rhine where I photographed a Swiss barge that was loaded with coal.

That evening, we talked about travel in Europe and listened to Uwe's personally recorded tapes of Madonna and of themes from American TV shows including Magnum, P.I., The Colbys, and The Fall Guy.  Rainer, Doreen and Michelle stopped by and we discussed plans for me for the next day.

It was sunny the next morning, Sunday, and Uwe and I toured the Shutterlindberg, the forested and vineyard-covered hills that surrounded Lahr.  Afterwards, I found myself at the CFN (Canadian Forces Network) radio and TV station doing a TV interview with Trish Cornforth followed in the afternoon by a radio interview with Doug Aldnidge.  After the taping, Doug talked about his sore teeth and the shabbiness of Berlin.  I was nervous yet glad in realizing that these interviews were going out to our service personnel in the area. 

Trish had straight dark hair and a look that struck me as German though she was actually British.  She spoke German fluently and was on the executive of the German Canadian Friendship Association.   Her extensive travels had included an overland trip from England to Nepal.  She had also served as a teacher in Madagascar.  Here in Lahr, she was also a reporter Der Kanadier, a local newspaper.

After the interviews, Uwe went home and I went to the Country Music Haus, where I hoped to meet Margaret.  She was there but was very tired and her head still spun painfully from a hangover from the party the night before.  Later that evening, Uwe and I returned to the bar for dinner.  A girl on crutches who had sprained her ankle while playing baseball came over and asked about my trip (she had seen the TV interview).  Earlier, Margaret had said she would being coming back to the bar this evening.  We hung around but I concluded that Margaret was too hung over.   (I had seen the last of Margaret.)

On Monday, I rode Melawend to the Rathaus were I was greeted warmly by Lord Mayor Werner Dietz, a tall, distinguished looking man with gray hair that was combed back.

"You have great courage to do this," he said of my journey.   After accepting the letters and trinkets from Fort Erie, he presented me with two bottles of Lahr's finest wine in a gift box.

Uwe and I then toured the ruins of a hilltop castle.  We rode down and photographed the town of Gengenbach.  The name of the town and the image of a big bird were painted in black on a tall bell tower/arch over road that led into the town.  Inside, it seemed every window was adorned with flower boxes.   This small old town, which had been placed under a preservation order, had gates and towers.  There were well-preserved 17^th and 18^th century patrician houses.

In the evening, I was the unofficial guest of honour at a meeting of the German – Canadian Friendship Association as it celebrated its 15^th anniversary.  The room was filled with the din of milling Germans and Canadians: military people, doctors, lawyers, and assorted husbands and wives, all finely dressed.  There was eating and drinking, people greeting each other and shaking hands.  Only a few people were younger than I was.  I thought that this was a shame because there were so many young Canadians in Lahr, and likely many young Germans as well.  Most of the members seemed to be German.  The population of Lahr was about 26,000 and half of them were Canadians.   

Finally, Rainer called the meeting to order.  He and Trisha went over past meetings and talked of upcoming events.  This was their first meeting after a summer break.  Then Rainer announced my presence.  I was petrified.   I expected that Rainer was going to call me up to give a speech (though I had earlier confided to him my fear of public speaking).   He simply indicated to the members where I was.  They turned to me and there was loud applause.  I felt my face grow warm.  After the formalities, people resumed their conversations.

Several members came to me and introduced themselves.

Colonel Charles Emond, the Base Commander in Lahr looked at my photos.  "I've travelled the world and I can't get pictures like these," he said.  Lucie, his wife, gave me names of people I could contact in Wellington, New Zealand.

"It is always nice to meet people who realize our dreams and prove that it can be done."  This was Dr. Jurgen Kull who was on the executive committee for the Association.  He suggested that many people had too many commitments and obligations in their daily lives to do what I was doing – but he believed that many people dreamed of doing something like this.

Trisha gave me four 500-gram bottles of Skippy Peanut Butter she had picked up at the Army base – the first North American peanut butter I had had since I left Canada.  Earlier, I had gone to the Canex and bought peanut butter there.  I now had about five pounds of peanut butter.

I'm stocked through to Greece!

I talked with Brigadier General LaLonde, the commander of all Canadian land forces in Europe.  "This is a fine thing you are doing."  We talked of peace and war and he summed up his feelings by writing in my Odyssey signature book: "The more nations know about each other, the less my brigade becomes necessary."

The next morning I packed up, photographed and thanked Uwe by his car, and then Melawend and I were off for Austria and Liechtenstein.  I stopped on the roadside at the edge of Freiburg.  Like so many war-torn towns, Freiburg was now a replica of its former self.   The town, noted for its gothic architecture, was razed to the ground in 1944 but had been meticulously rebuilt using old plans and photographs.

Ernest Hemingway and Pauline, his first wife, had stayed here in 1922 for four days.  At full pension, tips included, they stayed four days at a total cost of 80 cents each.  I was just going to pass through it.

As I consulted my map, a young guy on a 1976 BMW 1000cc motorcycle pulled up and asked me where I was going.  He led me through the city.  On the road that led out of town, we pulled over and I thanked him.  As he pulled away, Rainer stepped out of an office building.  Rainer was a representative for Xerox here in Freiburg.  I was grateful to have another chance to thank for making Lahr possible for me and for having taken the initiative of giving me a letter of reference.

Now Melawend and I were off to the Alps.  Mountains could be barriers, gateways or refuges.  By their nature, mountains were isolating, yet they attracted us by the millions.  We played there, we explored there, we meditated there.  Mountains were temples to self-discovery.  The countries built upon mountains were also intriguing – I felt that it took a special sort of people to live there.  I was going to the Alps to discover some of that.  Part of me was using the mountain countries as a retreat.  And I had another girl to meet.

 

 

Chapter 18

Alpine Bliss

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